Early Scientific Revolution
The Mid Reformation lasted from about 1547 AD until 1598 AD. It began with the end of the reign of Henry VIII in England in 1547 AD, who initiated the English Reformation. It then ended with the Edict of Nantes in 1598 AD, which ended the French Wars of Religion. As the Protestant Reformation rolled on in Europe, both France and England were rocked by turmoil with very different results. Catholic France emerged with a measure of religious tolerance, while Protestant England moved towards an increasingly staunch Puritanism that would play a role in the subsequent English Civil War. Meanwhile, the Scientific Revolution saw the gradual emergence of modern science. History French Reformation France was affected by the Protestant Reformation in a manner different from any other country; the French Wars of Religion (1562-1598). By the middle of the 16th century, there was a substantial Protestant minority, known in France as Huguenots, scattered throughout predominantly Catholic France; from ordinary people to powerful aristocrats. The inevitable religious clash would erupt after the death in 1559 of the son of Francis I, King Henry II. For the next thirty-years, the throne of France was occupied in succession by his three young sons under the regency of his widow, Catherine de Médicis, passionately committed to the Catholic cause. Sporadic violence between the Catholic and Protestant factions eventually culminated in 1572 with the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre. After a botched assassination attempt of a Huguenot noble who Catherine feared had too much influence over her son, the Queen overreached and approved the general slaughter of some 15,000 Protestants gathered for the wedding of Catherine’s daughter to Henry of Navarre, a Protestant. The conflict quickly descended into open civil war in 1584, when Protestant Henry became the heir to the French throne. When the moderate royalists were not clashing with the Protestant faction supported by the Dutch and English, they were in conflict with the Catholics assisted by Spain. In 1589, the king himself was assassinated by a Catholic fanatic. In the aftermath, in an unprecedented act, Protestant Henry of Navarre agreed to convert to Roman Catholicism on ascending to the throne of France as Henry IV (1589-1610); he was said to have declared that "Paris is well worth a mass". As a pragmatic politician, he displayed an unusual religious tolerance for the era by promulgating the Edict of Nantes (1598), which guaranteed religious tolerance to Huguenots in Catholic France. Though it ended the French Wars of Religion, Protestants would continue to suffer prejudice in France in the coming centuries. The remainder of Henry’s reign brought France twelve years of very productive peace, until he himself was assassinated. Henry was one of France's most popular kings, and four years after his death a bronze statue of “''Good King Henry''” on horseback was erected on the Pont Neuf; Paris's most famous bridge, also completed during Henry's reign in 1604. Children of Henry VIII in England Henry VIII did succeed in leaving a male heir, but only just; Edward VI (1547-53 AD) was a sickly young man. Although Henry had severed the Church of England from Rome, it was only during Edward’s regency that actual religious reform pressed ahead to establish a distinctive Anglican Church. Protestantism advanced rapidly through the systematic reformation of doctrine, worship, and adoption of the Book of Common Prayer (1549), modelled on the Calvinist tradition. Yet, the English Reformation would have to pass through fire before it was tempered into its final form. When Edward died, he was succeeded by his sister Mary I (1553-58 AD), a staunch Catholic by virtue of her mother Catherine of Aragon. In her five-year reign, she applied herself with vigour to the task of reimposing Roman Catholicism on England, with some 300 Protestant martyrs burnt at the stake, including the Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Cranmer; her executions earned her the posthumous moniker Bloody Mary. Mary was desperate to give birth to an heir who would displace from the succession her Protestant sister Elizabeth, but she only suffered numerous false pregnancies and disappointment. Deeply unpopular, many people were ready to rise-up against her, when she fell sick. On her deathbed Mary was no doubt well aware that her dogmatic efforts had been in vain. Her reign would bequeath to the Anglican Church two abiding characteristics; a dislike of religious fervour and a hatred of Roman Catholicism. When Elizabeth I (1558-1603 AD) ascended to the throne, England was in need of calm. She acted swiftly to re-establish the Act of Supremacy and the Church of England, but otherwise attempted to achieve a moderate climate that would neither inflame the Protestant Puritans, nor drive the Roman Catholics to rebellion. Nevertheless, Catholics did suffer religious persecution during her reign with some 210 Catholic priests and supporter put to death. Elizabeth also made peace with both France and Scotland in exchange for the loss of Calais; Mary had embroiled England in a French and Spanish conflict in support of her Spanish husband. Throughout her reign, the Queen relied heavily on an intensely loyal privy council, led by William Cecil. Together they took steps to boost trade, and established the Royal Exchange to act as a centre of commerce for the City of London. In foreign affairs, Elizabeth was cautious but shrewd, cleverly outmanoeuvring her rival Mary Queen of Scots. Catholic Mary had been forced to abdicate her throne in Scotland, when John Knox led the Protestant Reformation in Scotland (1546-60). Her arrival in northern England prompted the most dangerous rebellion of Elizabeth's reign when English Catholics tried to depose her in favour of her Catholic cousin Mary; the Rising of the North (1569-70). After the uprising fizzled out, Mary was arrested and imprisoned for nearly twenty years before Elizabeth finally agreed to have her executed. Meanwhile, the latter half of the 16th century saw a shift in England’s traditional alignment in Europe. For centuries France had been England's main enemy, but now the threat was increasingly from Catholic Spain. Religion was an obvious cause of the shift, especially when England began financially supporting a Protestant uprising in the Habsburg Netherlands, the Dutch War of Independence (1568–1648), from which the Dutch Republic would emerge an independent country. However, another was the activities of English sea captains like John Hawkins and Francis Drake in the Caribbean with the queen’s active support. At best the privateers infringed Spain's trading monopoly and at worst would rob any Spanish vessel they can overpower. The English incursions on Spanish interests in the New World escalated in 1579 when Drake captured a fat defenceless Spanish vessel in the previously safe Pacific during his voyage round the world in 1577-80; it was carrying 80 lbs. of gold and 26 tons of silver. By the time Drake departed Plymouth for the Caribbean in 1585 with a fleet of about thirty ships, his activities looked more like an expedition of war. The Spanish Armada of 130 ships sailed from northern Spain in August 1588 with the intention of gaining control over the English Channel and escorting an invasion army from Habsburg Belgium to England. In contrast to the Spanish heavy galleons which were devastating at close range, the English fleet consisted of smaller and swifter vessels, firing lighter cannon balls over a greater range. The English under the command of Lord Howard of Effingham, attacked off Plymouth, Portland Bill and the Isle of Wight but did little damage, and the Armada safely reached Calais. While she waited to pick-up the army, the English sent fire ships into the harbour causing the Spanish to cut their cables in disarray. The next day the English attacked again off Gravelines north of Calais, where the nibbler English fleet provoked the Armada until she ran out of shot, whereupon the English did serious damage to the fleet. The Spanish fleet escaped into the North Sea, and then attempted to take the shattered fleet round Scotland and into the Atlantic. However, unfamiliar with the Gulf Stream, the fleet was struck by strong winds with many ships wrecked on the Scottish and Irish coasts; only 67 ships limped back to Spain. In the aftermath, the English tried to press their advantage with its own Armada the next year, and expeditions in 1595 and 1597, but all ended in severe defeats. The conflict between England and Spain would finally be settled by Elizabeth and Phillip’s successors in the Treaty of London (1604). It was expected that Elizabeth would marry and produce an heir to continue the Tudor line, but she never did despite no shortage of suitors. Her reasons were never clear, but we can speculate some combination of: her father’s treatment of his wives especially the execution of her mother, reluctance to lose her own anonymity as head of state, and the political advantage of dangling the possibility of a marriage alliance. Her choice for successor would have profound implications for the future of Britain; King James VI Stuart of Scotland. Elizabeth’s reign has often been depict by historians as a Golden Age in English history; the Elizabethan era. It represented the apex of the English Renaissance and saw the flowering of poetry, music, literature, and especially theatre, led by playwrights such as William Shakespeare and Christopher Marlowe. Reformation in Ireland Nowhere in Europe did the Protestant Reformation have such long-lasting effects than in Ireland; a quarter-century of sectarian violence in Northern Ireland from 1970 and it still poisons its politics right down to the present day. There are many reasons why the Reformation failed in Ireland, and the majority of the population continued to adhere to Catholicism; rejected largely by both the Gaelic Irish and old Anglo-Normans lords. Protestantism was imposed on Ireland by the English monarchy very gradually in parallel with the Tudor reconquest which was not essentially complete until 1607. It therefore both became associated with the brutal behaviour of the reconquest, and only effectively started in the early 17th century when the counter-reformations was in full effect; new Catholic priest returned from their education on the continent with a firm intellectual grounding that Protestantism found impossible to break. Meanwhile, the ultimate driving force of the Reformations was to preach Christianity in the people’s own language, but the Protestant Church of Ireland was culturally English, and Church reformers made little effort to learn the native Gaelic language. Thus there was the rather bizarre situation of a Reformation which preached in a foreign language; Gaelic remained the majority tongue as late as 1800. With the failure of the Reformation, there was the gradual creation of two firmly different cultures in Ireland each with their own distinctive theological and political identities and allegiances. Rebellions were endemic in Ireland during and after the Tudor reconquest, until about 1700 when Ireland settled into an uneasy peace. After the minor Desmond Rebellions of 1569–73 and 1579–83, the most serious uprising against English rule erupted in Ulster; the Nine Years’ War (1594-1603 AD). Ulster was the region of Ireland where the English had least control, where the powerful Gaelic Irish chieftains of O’Neill and O’Donnell held sway. After victory at the Battles of Clontibret (1595) and the Yellow Ford (1598), the rebels were in firm control of Ulster. However unable to go on the offensive against English control of the rest of the island, O’Neill appealed to Spain for help; England’s main enemy at the time. A Spanish army landed in Kinsale near Cork in 1601, but were immediately besieged by the English. O’Neill marched south to lift the siege but far from his homeland, he was easily defeated at the Battle of Kinsale (1602). Although O’Neill and the other rebel leaders were pardoned after the uprising, after the Gunpowder Plot (1605) it became impossible to be a Catholic noble in Protestant Britain. In 1607, they fled Ireland for the continent in the hopes of restarting the uprising. However, with peace between England and Spain since 1604, they found it impossible to find foreign support. In their absence, the Plantation of Ulster was begun in 1609, with English and Scottish Protestants granted land in Ulster to pacify the rebellious region. Over the subsequent centuries, Ulster would be transformed from the region most resistant to English control, to the densest Protestant settlement. Autocratic Rule in Russia After Ivan the Great laid the foundations of what would become the Russian state, the autocratic and despotic character that defined the Russian Tsars gradually emerged, especially under his grandson, Ivan IV (1547-84); better known today as Ivan the Terrible, although the Russian translation is closer to Awe-Inspiring. Ivan inherited the throne at only three, and the violent struggle between factions of the nobility during his regency shaped his subsequent determination to create a strong centralised state. On taking the reins of power, Ivan’s government embarked on a wide program of reforms of the legal system, local and national government, and the creation of a standing army. The central aim of his government reforms was to limit the powers of the hereditary nobility, and promote the interests of the service gentry, who held their landed estates solely as compensation for government service; thus were completely dependent on the Tsar. Russia was at war for the greater part of Ivan’s reign. Campaigns to the south and east against hostile khanates brought Russia to the mouth of the Volga on the Caspian Sea and to western Siberia; St. Basil's Cathedral was constructed in Moscow to commemorate these victories. He was less successful in the west where the twenty-four-year Livonian War proved fruitless for Russia in her long battle for a Baltic sea-port; a battle not won until 1703 by Peter the Great. Ivan was paranoid and prone to breathtaking outbreaks of violence, especially after the death of his first wife in 1560. Many nobles perished throughout his reign, some being publically executed with calculated cruelty. The bloody purges culminated in the sack of the wealthy city of Novgorod in 1670 which the Tsar suspected was planning to defect to Lithuania. In his old age he sent money to monasteries with a list of more than 3000 of his victims for whom the monks were to pray. In one fit of rage, Ivan beat his pregnant daughter-in-law for wearing immodest clothing, causing her to have a miscarriage. When his son confronted him, Ivan struck him with a staff, fatally wounding him. Thus upon Ivan's death, the Russian throne was left to his feeble-minded middle son Feodor (1584-98). The death of Ivan's childless son was followed by a period of civil wars. Foreign intervention from Sweden and Poland would finally unite the rival factions behind a distant relation of Ivan the Terrible, Michael Romanov. Age of Discovery In the Americas, with the discovery of massive silver deposits in Peru, thousands of Spaniards began pouring into the region. With the natives used a forced labour, the Spanish Treasure Fleet began to operate in 1566 AD, encompassing 50 ships by the end of the century. In Portuguese Brazil, sugar cane and later coffee emerged as the main products, while in Spanish Mexico it was maize, wheat, and tobacco; the Spanish introduced tobacco to the Europeans in about 1528, and it reached England in 1578 thanks to Walter Raleigh. By 1560, Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade had begun, shipping African slaves first to the plantations of Brazil. The Spanish and Portuguese would soon be joined by the English, French and Dutch. Meanwhile, the Portuguese remained the dominant power in the East, but this too would not last long. By 1571, Spain had already established a presence in the Philippines, with trade routes via Mexico back to Europe. Early Scientific Revolution By the middle of the 16th century, there was the beginning of a movement away from the Medieval practice of seeking answers from the Church and Ancient Greece or Roman sources, and towards an emphasis on reason and scientific observations. The publication in 1543 of Nicolaus Copernicus's On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres is often cited as the beginning of the European Scientific Revolution. In it Copernicus (d. 1543) formulated a model of the universe that placed the Sun rather than the Earth at the centre of the universe; likely independently of the ancient Greek astronomer Aristarchus of Samos who formulated such a model some eighteen centuries earlier. Subsequently developments in astronomy and mathematics, science, and medicine would transform the views of society about nature. In astronomy, Kepler and Galileo gave Copernicus's theory credibility: Kepler (d. 1630) introduced his laws of planetary motion; and Galileo (d. 1642) made his main contributions in the detailed observations he made with telescope. In science: William Gilbert (d. 1603) laid the foundations of a theory of magnetism and electricity; and Francis Bacon (d. 1626) argued for a new system of logic based only upon inductive reasoning and careful observation of events in nature. In medicine: Andreas Vesalius (d. 1564) published one of the most influential books on human anatomy; and Ambroise Paré (d. 1590) pioneered steps in surgery and invented surgical instruments. This phase of the emergence of modern science would reach its conclusions in Isaac Newton's Principia (1687), which formulated the laws of motion and universal gravitation, and completed the synthesis of a new cosmology.